SELWESKI: Welcome to the wacky world of Sequesterville

This is a story about a group of 535 people so entrenched in their ways – and, consequently, so incapable of doing their job – that they created a trap door under their feet, with a pond full of alligators beneath, as a means of forcing themselves to act responsibly.

And yet, nearly 18 months later, Congress still stood stubbornly above that trap door and watched it swing open on Friday.

Better to be eaten by alligators than to act in a responsible, bipartisan, pragmatic manner.

Welcome to the wacky world of Sequesterville.

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The blame game has served as a congressional staple for decades, if not centuries, but the automatic sequester cuts that took effect raised that smarmy, partisan art form to a new level. Talking points and sound bites -- not casting votes or passing bills -- are now the name of the game.

As our lawmakers drift from crisis to crisis, it’s almost as if Congress no longer consists of two political parties but two competing advertising agencies that are not interested in negotiations or compromise or legislating. The winner in this self-absorbed, finger-pointing spectacle will not be decided until nearly two years from now, when a new Congress is seated in January 2015.The 2013-14 session of Congress that began in January seems already doomed to be a PR contest that further polarizes Capitol Hill.

This is salesmanship, not substance.

The sequester, approved by the president and Congress, was meant to be such an irrational package of across-the-board cuts that no one in Washington would let them stand. But something happened along the way to the circus that is Inside-the-Beltway politics. Sequestration now suits some House members just fine. It’s better than meeting in the middle.

On the right, conservatives point out that the sequestration process requires cuts of just 2.4 percent and that, overall, the federal budget will remain above last year’s levels. On the left, scenarios of doom predict dramatic reductions in government services that will impact every American.

In these two competing advertising campaigns, the Democrats seem to be winning, largely because their product spokesman, Barack Obama, is good at this game and has engaged in a “road show” of political pep rallies.

A Gallup poll released the other day showed Obama with a 4-1 advantage over House Speaker John Boehner and the Republican leadership in spreading their competing sequester messages. “Bad” and “disaster” were among the words used by voters to describe Congress’ failure on the issue.

Yet, Obama and his crew are guilty of false advertising. Not only have they overstated the potential effects of sequestration cuts, they have slipped into falsehoods to make their case to the nation.

The Republicans, already in disarray, have yet another problem as the tea party has created a chasm between the GOP’s deficit hawks and the defense hawks. The rudderless Republican Party, by inexplicably accepting cuts that the Pentagon believes will be devastating, drifts toward the radical Ron Paul school of foreign policy.

What remains to be seen is whether the sequester cuts will be as damaging as Obama claims, or the public eventually views them as a minor nuisance. The upper hand in Washington lies in whether sequestration shows that spending cuts can be accomplished relatively pain-free, or that even small budget reductions disrupt Americans’ lives.

Meanwhile, beyond the sequestration stage, this was truly an absurd week in national politics.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the most popular Republican in America, was not invited to speak at the annual conservative Republican conclave known as CPAC. Christie has an astonishing 74 percent approval rating in a deep Blue State, but he bashed the House Republicans and Boehner for delaying Hurricane Sandy disaster relief funds for his state and he praised Obama for taking the lead on assistance for the devastated shoreline.

A top conservative who oversees the CPAC conference, scheduled for later this month, explained that CPAC is an all-star lineup and Christie was snubbed because he didn’t have a very good year. Really?

Among the invitees are Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michelle Bachmann, both of whom ran presidential campaigns that flopped. Former congressman Allen West, who lost re-election after claiming dozens of his House colleagues are members of the Communist Party, will be at CPAC. And then there’s invitee Mitt Romney, who ran for president for five years yet lost twice, including a defeat last November in an election that no Republican had any business losing.

Is this an all-star team, or just a lineup that kow-tows to the ultraconservative creed?

The knock on Christie, despite his spectacular success, is that he’s relatively conservative on some issues but not so much on others. Just like normal people.

No wonder the GOP is unable to come to terms with the results of the 2012 elections. They are living in Sequesterville.

Next, we had the battle between Bob Woodward and the White House. Woodward wrote this past week that the Obama administration was “moving the goalposts” by falsely claiming that the alternative to sequester cuts was always intended to include a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases.

The White House PR machine hit back hard and Woodward, a great reporter with an ability to cultivate sources that is second to none, regrettably succumbed to the non-stop Washington food fight. He implied that a high-level administration official had threatened him, saying Woodward will “regret” his comments on this issue.

As a result, we have conservative Republicans praising Bob Woodward of The Washington Post as a truth-teller and liberal Democrats trashing him for the way he presented the White House reaction to his column.

Sounds like we’re in Crazy Town. But no, it’s Sequesterville.

Presidents typically close each speech by saying, “God bless the United States of America.”

With the state we’re in, I would suggest a more proper closing would be: God help us.